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BloodRayne developers sue Microsoft for patent infringement

bloodrayne terminal reality microsoft patent lawsuit

I don’t think I’m being presumptuous if I guess that you probably haven’t thought about BloodRayne in a very long time. With a pair of decent but forgettable PS2 era action games, a key film in the Uwe Boll canon, and a Playboy spread, BloodRayne is a run-of-the-mill icon of a bygone time, but the developers behind it are back in the news – suing Microsoft for patent infringement.

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Terminal Reality, Inc. and Infernal Technology, LLC filed a complaint for patent infringement against Microsoft Corporation earlier this month, according to gaming patent tracker Patent Arcade. The alleged infringements involve lighting and shadow tech for graphics simulations, which the plaintiffs say a number of Microsoft games have infringed on.

The Infernal Engine began development as the technology behind the original BloodRayne, and began licensing the engine some time after. The engine was licensed out exclusively through Infernal Technology, and has powered games ranging all the way from Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars to Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

Among the games which are said to infringe on those patents are a tremendous range of Microsoft exclusives, including games as old as Halo: Reach and Crackdown, and as recent as Sea of Thieves and Gears of War 4 – even the as-yet-unreleased Crackdown 3. Microsoft-supported third party titles including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Microsoft published Terminal Reality’s motion controlled Kinect Star Wars title in 2012, one of the last games developed by the studio and one of the last to run on Infernal Engine.